THE ancient Iraqi city of Babylon is facing a very modern threat from the twin curses of oil and politics. Once the centre of the ancient world, it has been despoiled in modern times by Saddam Hussein's fantasies of grandeur, invading armies and village sprawl.
Now come two more setbacks for the Iraqi city famous for its Hanging Gardens and Tower of Babel: Parts of its grounds have been torn up for an oil pipeline, and a diplomatic spat is hampering its bid for coveted UNESCO heritage status.
The pipeline was laid in March by Iraq's Oil Ministry, overriding outraged Iraqi archaeologists and drawing a rebuke from UNESCO, the global guardian of cultural heritage.
Then Iraq's tourism minister blocked official visits to the site by the World Monuments Fund, a New York-based group that is helping Babylon secure a World Heritage site designation after three rejections.
Growing villages are spilling onto its grounds and rising groundwater threatens the ancient mud brick ruins in the roughly 20 per cent of its area that has been excavated over the past century.
“It's a mess and there are a load of problems,” said Jeffrey Allen, a consultant for the World Monuments Fund.
The new oil pipeline runs 1.7 metres under Babylon for about 1.5 kilometres, alongside two other pipelines dug in the Saddam era.
The antiquities department has sued the ministry, demanding it remove the pipeline. UNESCO said it wrote to the Iraqi authorities, expressing concern.
Meanwhile, the World Monuments Fund is trying to help authorities protect the ruins from rising groundwater caused by the government's irrigation policies, said Allen, the group's Babylon site manager.
The WMF is training Iraqi staff and helping to prepare Babylon's bid for UNESCO recognition. But now the WMF itself has fallen foul of officialdom. Iraq's government decided several months ago to suspend ties with US universities and institutions involved in archaeology in Iraq. It's part of a long-running dispute over the fate of the Iraqi Jewish archives. The trove of books, photos and religious items were found in Baghdad by US troops and taken to the US for study and preservation under an agreement with Iraqi authorities that stipulated they would be returned.
But Iraqi authorities grew impatient to get them back, and now Tourism Minister Liwa Smaysin alleges that the US sent some of the artifacts to Israel for an exhibition, a claim denied both by the US State Department and Israel's Antiquities Authority. The US says the archives will eventually be returned to Iraq.
Qais Rashid, head of Iraq's State Board of Antiquities and Heritage, said the government also called off a US training course for employees of the antiquities department. “This is a big loss for us, the frozen relations,” he said. But he also argued that Babylon will remain a top archaeological attraction, regardless of its formal designation.
“Babylon can survive on its own.”
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Something is not right. This message is just to keep things from messing up down the road